At 2006-06-01 10:46 +1000 Peter Barclay wrote:
>I wanted to see what type of illustrations CADintosh could be used
>for
Peter - I suspect that CADintosh (or indeed any CAD application) may
not be the optimum choice for technical illustration. Having said
that, I do use it for producing illustrations to go in specifications
or instructions written in a word-processor application. It just
depends what sort of effect is desired - sometimes I find a
MacDraw-type application such as OmniGraffle more suitable for that
job. I have no experience with "painting" or "creative drawing"
applications (eg Illustrator) - I'm an engineer, not an artist.
>Is it a 3D program, or 2D only
Strictly 2D.
>Is it for isometric, dimetric
>or perspective
I guess you could produce all those types of drawing with it
(although I'm not quite sure what you mean by "dimetric"). Its basic
purpose is for producing engineering drawings, typically 3-views of
the sort that used to be called "blueprints" (because of the
reproduction process).
>Is it a vector program
Yes.
>What type of files does it
>import or export
It has its own native format and reads and writes (some flavours of)
.DXF; it will also import or export IGES & HPGL as well as PICT and a
few special types such as airfoil co-ordinates that are of particular
interest to me. One feature that I find very useful is the ability to
import a TIFF file (for example, a scanned document or even a flat
object). The resulting image can then be dimmed and new lines drawn
over it to reproduce it exactly to size. Once the drawing is
complete, the TIFF can be discarded.
You might find answers to some of your questions on the CADintosh
page at Thorsten's website:
http://www.lemkesoft.de/en/cadintosh.htm
You might also want to look at the archives of this list and see some
of the comments of other users. Coming from MacDraw/ClarisDraw, I
found it a very steep learning curve at first. I have also used
TurboCAD for Mac, which differs enough from CADintosh in its command
set and philosophy to be confusing if you switch between the two.
However, if you need to do any serious work involving elliptical
curves, I feel the CADintosh ellipse tool has serious limitations
which make TurboCAD the preferred tool in that sort of situation,
despite it still being at version 1.0 and so still a bit rough at the
edges.
Hope this is helpful.
regards
Rowland
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